AUSTIN,?? ??? ??? ?? Texas -- Six weeks after Austin's City Council voted to adopt regulations that drove Uber and Lyft out of America's 11th largest city, some drivers aren't all that wistful for the good old days.
"Uber doesn't pay nothing. They pay crap," said Frank, a driver for Get Me, during a recent trip in downtown Austin.
Get Me is just one of the now eight-and-counting upstart services -- including one nonprofit -- that are filling the vacuum in an attempt to try to chart a new roadmap to ride-hailing success.
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Without having to worry about a pair of multibillion-dollar corporations, these quirky newcomers with names such as Wingz, Get Me, Fare and Fasten now only have to compete against each other -- and, perhaps more importantly, to survive their own inherent shortcomings.
Uber and Lyft may have paved the road for these ride-hailing upstarts, but there's plenty of bumps to be smoothed out.
"It's OK, but the app needs a lot of work done. It crashes in between transactions," Frank said about Get Me. "And sometimes it shows a bunch of cars around you, but there aren't actually any around. It's like a trick."
You probably read about Uber and Lyft’s retreat from Austin’s city limits last month after voters here delivered an embarrassing defeat to the ride-hailing mechasaurs. In case you missed it, a quick recap: In December, City Council passed new regulations that Uber and Lyft didn’t like, primarily centered around fingerprint-based background checks for its drivers. The companies both sank a jaw-dropping $9.1 million into a referendum to overturn the new law. A healthy 57 percent of voters rejected the effort, and days later, Uber and Lyft closed up shop in Austin.
That sudden departure came with its share of anxiety. Before Uber and Lyft, the many patrons of Austin’s notorious nightlife had few reliable alternatives to drunk driving. The estrangement of two Silicon Valley darlings was also seen by many as a blemish on our hip, happenin’ reputation.
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How could Austin possibly maintain its slacker-chic-meets-tech-geek appeal after telling the Twin Titans of Innovation and Disruption to pound sand?
Very quickly, Weird City produced its answer: by becoming an urban Petri dish incubating a strange new brew of alternatives to the my-way-or-the-highway policies of Uber and Lyft.
Get me
Get Me has the claim to fame of being Austin’s oldest alternative to Uber and Lyft. The Dallas-born company began operating in the capital of Texas last August as a delivery-on-demand service. In December, Get Me retooled its app to allow rides-for-hire.
At the time, its executives cast Get Me as the friendly, local-ish company that was a-okay with the council’s new rules that Uber and Lyft found so offensive. Despite the goodwill it built among some of our elected officials, Get Me’s clunky interface, unreliable service, and inexplicably anonymous CEO rendered the company not much more than a try-hard punchline when it found itself as the last app standing in early May.
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Since then, the company claims to have updated its app, attracted thousands of new drivers and riders, and raised some relatively serious cash. But as my driver, Frank, indicated, the problems still persist.
For my Thursday afternoon ride, the app dispatched him from southeast Austin to pick me up at my downtown apartment. I waited a full nine minutes, unheard of during the days of Uber and Lyft. And the six-minute trip, a straight shot with no traffic, cost me $6.85. Before the tip.
The newbies
Fortunately, while Get Me (presumably) works the bugs out, Austin passengers and drivers already have a wealth of other options to choose from. The menu at the moment offers seven other services, some of which Frank told me he’s already signed up to drive for.
Perhaps positioned to scale up to meet Austin’s needs more efficiently are Wingz, Fare and Fasten, all of which are already up and running in other major U.S. cities.
At first, San Francisco-based Wingz aimed for the niche market of passengers in need of rides to and from the airport. Like Get Me, the company has since pivoted to all-purpose trips, but Wingz offers a twist: It give riders flat-rate fares and the option to choose their favorite drivers.
Both Fasten and Fare share the stronger resemblances to the model forged by Uber and Lyft, though there are key differences. Phoenix-based Fare eschews surge pricing, welcome news for riders who often find surprisingly large damage to their checking accounts after a night out.
Fasten also dispenses with surge pricing. Sort of. Riders can opt to boost their own rates in order to effectively bid their way to the front of the line. For drivers, Fasten also only charges takes a flat $1 per ride rather than the percentage other companies charge.
"We understand that drivers are actually our customers," Fasten’s CEO Kirill Evdakov explained to me. "We don't pay drivers, we charge them. And when you charge someone you have to provide good customer service."
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Potentially better news for Frank and the rest of Austin's drivers is RideAustin, the nonprofit operation conceived by deep-pocketed local tech titans, including Trilogy founder Joe Liemandt. RideAustin’s drivers get to pocket 80 percent of their fares. The difference simply goes to keeping the lights on.
"Not having that margin to give to investors will allow us to keep prices competitive and our drivers happy by paying them more," RideAustin’s spokesperson Joe Deshotel said. He also pointed out that the app allows passengers to round up their fares to the nearest dollar and donate the change to local charities.
A comeback?
While each of these (and several more) companies try to establish themselves in Austin, an ominous specter looms on the local horizon.
Rumors of an imminent return by Uber and/or Lyft constantly swirl around city hall circles. And at the Republican-dominated state legislature, several lawmakers are working on statewide deregulation to placate Uber and Lyft. But even in an institution where business tycoons have been known to brazenly hand out checks on the Senate floor, that’s easier said than done.
Michael Gaubert, showed up to that same hearing, bringing with him the Texas lobbyist’s equivalent of a nuclear weapon: Three-time Super Bowl winning wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, Michael Irvin.
At a recent Texas House committee hearing, an Uber attaché appealed to lawmakers, explaining that 31 other states have adopted prevailing regulations. While such an argument might work in a state like North Carolina -- home of a bizarre pork-and-ketchup-based bastardization of barbecue -- one Republican lawmaker reminded him of the Lone Star State’s legendary exceptionalism. “Sometimes we hold ourselves to higher standards,” he warned.
To further hamper Uber and Lyft’s efforts, Get Me’s CEO, who recently revealed himself to be Dallas lawyer Michael Gaubert, showed up to that same hearing, bringing with him the Texas lobbyist’s equivalent of a nuclear weapon: Three-time Super Bowl-winning wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, Michael Irvin. Gaubert called Irvin “a business partner,” and though The Playmaker did not testify, his presence alone was enough to visibly flatter the fawning legislators.
Star-struck lawmakers notwithstanding, the legislature won’t be able to provide relief for Uber and Lyft until the autumn of 2017, which means the companies’ best shot of getting back onto Austin’s lucrative streets is through the negotiating table with local officials.
But their leverage -- already diminished by that stinging election loss -- erodes even further each day as the new breed of startups compete for a critical mass of drivers, passengers and investors.
If just one of them can find a formula for success within the confines of the city’s regulations, it will demonstrate a proof of concept that municipalities don’t have to bend to Uber and Lyft’s ultimatums.
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